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'World Of Warcraft Classic' Attracts Over 1 Million Concurrent Twitch Viewers For Launch Day

World of Warcraft Classic launched today for all active WoW subscribers.

Blizzard Entertainment

Blizzard is partying like it's 2004 right now. As of the time of this writing over 1.1 million people are actively watching streamers play World of Warcraft Classic for its launch day today on Twitch. If information available on TwitchTracker is accurate, this is pretty huge.

Typically World of Warcraft, a nearly 15-year old MMO, only averages around 34,000 concurrent viewers in a given week. But right now it's accounting for over 50% of all viewers on the entirety of Twitch. That's massive.

World of Warcraft is by far the most popular game on Twitch right now, due in large part to ... [+] Classic's launch.

Granted—it's unclear how many of these viewers are watching streams of WoWClassic and not base WoW itself, but it's reasonable to assume the vast majority are WoW Classic streams. Even if you stripped away all 30-40,000 that usually watch standard WoW, that's still over 1 million people actively watching WoW Classic.

For those unaware, WoW Classic is a separate version of the game that aims to emulate what the experience was like (for the most part) back in 2004 when it originally launched. Some small changes have been made to make things a bit better and more smooth, but for the most part this is supposed to serve as a portal to the past for nostalgia-riddled gamers across the world.

In order to play WoW Classic you need an active subscription to the game. Your subscription will grant you full access to the base game itself, as well as the Classic version. The cheapest way to get in then is to pay the $14.99 monthly subscription fee, or you can buy months in 3-month or 6-month increments to save cash over the long-run.

As someone that never got into WoW, not for lack of trying, I'm pretty surprised and fascinated by the massive popularity. However, a yearning for simpler times is pretty pervasive across the entire MMO landscape at the moment. Games like Lord of the Rings Online and even EverQuest are running progression-locked servers that emulate classic experiences as well.

For more trending topics in the world of MMOs, read my other recent stories: